Ellen Rothenberg (scientist)


Ellen V. Rothenberg is an American biologist who is an Edward B. Lewis Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology. She investigates the molecular mechanisms that underpin lineage choice. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
WWW bbe.caltech.edu/people/el...

Early life and education

Rothenberg describes her upbringing as "sex-blind". She credits her parents with giving her a strong sense of one's potential and says her father "taught math and logic to the point that got in trouble with teachers". As a child, Rothenberg originally wanted to become a physicist, but her high school biology classes inspired her to pursue biochemistry. Her high school teachers taught her about protein structure and how their structures confer biological function. While Rothenberg was an undergraduate student at Harvard University, her tutor, Boris Magasanik, inspired her to work on gene regulation. After earning her bachelor's degree, Rothenberg started a MD–PhD program offered jointly by Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She eventually dropped the MD but continued, at MIT, her PhD research with David Baltimore. She was the first to synthesize in vitro the genome of a retrovirus. She completed her doctoral research in the Department of Biology and Center for Cancer Research in 1977. Rothenberg was a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow with Edward Boyse at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

Research and career

In 1979, Rothenberg was appointed to the faculty at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where she spent three years before moving to the California Institute of Technology. She was later named Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University over a term spanning from 2021–2027. Rothenberg investigates the molecular mechanisms that underpin lineage selection. This includes the processes that determine the differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells into T cells. There are several steps to this process, in which the multi-potentiality of stem cells are reduced whilst the T-cell specific differentiation events start.
Rothenberg studies the transcription factors that induce gene expression to guide development of T-lineage cells. She has modeled the gene networks involved and the interactions of transcription factors and chromatin. She identified that subtle changes in these pathways can predispose to autoimmunity.

Awards and honors

Selected publications

  • Long Li; Mark Leid; Ellen V Rothenberg.. An Early T Cell Lineage Commitment Checkpoint Dependent on the Transcription Factor Bcl11b Science; Vol. 329; No. 5987; https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1188989.   PMC 2935300. PMID 20595614.
  • Jingli A Zhang; Ali 'Mortazavi; Brian A Williams; Barbara J Wold; Ellen V Rothenberg. Dynamic Transformations of Genome-wide Epigenetic Marking and Transcriptional Control Establish T Cell Identity Cell; Vol. 149; No. 2; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2012.01.056.  PMID 22500808. PMC 3336965.
  • Hao Yuan Kueh; Ameya Champhekhar; Stephen L Nutt; Michael B Elowitz; Ellen V Rothenberg'. Positive Feedback Between PU.1 and the Cell Cycle Controls Myeloid Differentiation Science; Vol. 341; No. 6146; https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1240831. PMID 23868921. PMC 3913367.